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The Mediterranean Diet from Ancel Keys to the UNESCO Cultural Heritage. A Pattern of Sustainable Development between Myth and Reality

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Abstract

This paper deals with the Mediterranean Diet as a potential tool for increasing knowledge and promoting a sustainable development especially in least developed and developing regions. The confirmation of the MD as an Intangible Heritage of Humanity, recognized by UNESCO in 2010, is producing a significant social effect in the seven nations and communities involved. In addition in 2012 the MD has been included by the FAO at the top of the list of the most sustainable diets in the planet. The double recognition of this life style is generating a new approach to this cultural heritage by the stakeholders who are progressively recognizing that it may become a new tool to develop green economy and eco-tourism. To this end the author analyses the real and mythological genealogy of the MD in order to bring out its cultural, economic and social potentiality.
Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 223 ( 2016 ) 655 – 661
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1877-0428 © 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
Peer-review under responsibility of the organizing committee of ISTH2020
doi: 10.1016/j.sbspro.2016.05.380
2nd International Symposium "NEW METROPOLITAN PERSPECTIVES" - Strategic planning,
spatial planning, economic programs and decision support tools, through the implementation of
Horizon/Europe2020. ISTH2020, Reggio Calabria (Italy), 18-20 May 2016
The Mediterranean Diet from Ancel Keys to the UNESCO
Cultural Heritage. A Pattern of Sustainable Development
between Myth and Reality
Elisabetta Moroa,*
aUniversity of Naples Suor Orsola Benincasa, via Suor Orsola 10, 80135 Napoli, Italy
Abstract
This paper deals with the Mediterranean Diet as a potential tool for increasing knowledge and promoting a
sustainable development especially in least developed and developing regions. The confirmation of the MD as an
Intangible Heritage of Humanity, recognized by UNESCO in 2010, is producing a significant social effect in the
seven nations and communities involved. In addition in 2012 the MD has been included by the FAO at the top of the
list of the most sustainable diets in the planet. The double recognition of this life style is generating a new approach
to this cultural heritage by the stakeholders who are progressively recognizing that it may become a new tool to
develop green economy and eco-tourism. To this end the author analyses the real and mythological genealogy of the
MD in order to bring out its cultural, economic and social potentiality.
© 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.
Peer-review under responsibility of the organizing committee of ISTH2020.
Keywords: Mediterranean Diet; ancel keys; UNESCO; cultural heritage; sustainable development.
* Corresponding author. Tel.: +0-081-252-2372.
E-mail address: elisabetta.moro@unisob.na.it
© 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
Peer-review under responsibility of the organizing committee of ISTH2020
656 Elisabetta Moro / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 223 ( 2016 ) 655 – 661
The confirmation of the Mediterranean Diet as an Intangible Heritage of Humanity recognized by UNESCO in
2010 is producing a very strong social effect in the nations involved, but also in the UNESCO Communities
concerned by this political, cultural and social process, such as Cilento in Italy, Koroni/Coroni in Greece, Agros in
Cyprus, Brač and Hvar in Croatia, Soria in Spain, Chefchaouen in Morocco and Tavira in Portugal. In addition in
2012 the Mediterranean Diet (MD) has also been included by the FAO inside the group of the most sustainable diets
on the planet (Burlingame & Dernini, 2012; Petrillo, 2012: 225; Dernini & Berry, 2015). This double recognition
has generated a new approach to this heritage that is increasingly relevant for the green economies and for the
development of many territories that are far from mass tourism or large scale agriculture. In order to understand the
potential of this anthropological heritage it is first necessary to clarify what the MD is and how this cultural
patternhas been discovered and theorized, in other words the process that has produced the identification of this
specific deposit of culture and the stakeholders involved.
First of all it is important to realize that the aim of the UNESCO recognition has not been the nutritional pyramid,
with its ideal proportions between carbohydrates, proteins and fats. The aim is not even the specific products used in
the Mediterranean cuisine, like tomatoes, olive oil, grains and wine, and much less pasta and pizza, even if those
foods are two planetary successes of the Italian traditional cooking and two great representatives of the MD.
Instead, what UNESCO officially recognized was that “The Mediterranean diet constitutes a set of skills,
knowledge, practices and traditions ranging from the landscape to the table” (Petrillo, 2012: 224). As a matter of
fact what UNESCO recognized was the anthropological pattern concerning the culture of food that all the
communities we mentioned have created, invented and transmitted for centuries. Rhetorics, and social policies have
transformed simple food as a symbolic operator, a community factor, a marker of identity. What they created is a
unique way to use food as a tool in order to build a community habitat. Eating together and food traditions in this
geographic area are elements of an alimentary code that transforms the table in a metaphoric field in which the koiné
(community) is constantly built and re-built (Detienne, 1972; Detienne & Vernant, 1977; Braudel, 1985; Niola, 2015;
Teti, 2015).
Following is the definition of this cultural heritage written in the UNESCO Nomination File
1
by its stakeholders
(the seven communities, with the aid of their national governments):
«The Mediterranean Diet derived from the Greek word díaita, way of life is the set of skills, knowledge,
rituals, symbols and traditions, ranging from the landscape to the table, which in the Mediterranean basin concerns
the crops, harvesting, picking, fishing, animal husbandry, conservation, processing, cooking, and particularly
sharing and consuming the cuisine. It is at the table that the spoken word plays a major role in describing,
transmitting, enjoying and celebrating the element. Served for millennia, the Mediterranean Diet, the fruit of
constant sharing nourished as much by internal synergies as by external contributions, a crucible of traditions,
innovations and creativity, expresses the way of life of the basin communities, particularly those of the seven States
Parties submitting this nomination and more precisely that of the communities of Agros, Brač and Hvar, Soria,
Koroni/Coroni, Cilento, Chefchaouen and Tavira.
With regard to its utilitarian, symbolic, and artistic popular expressions, it is important to highlight the
craftsmanship and production of ancestral domestic objects linked to the Mediterranean Diet and still present in
everyday objects, such as receptacles for the transport, preservation and consumption of food, including ceramic
plates and glasses, among others. As a unique lifestyle determined by the Mediterranean climate and region, the
Mediterranean Diet also appears in the cultural spaces, festivals and celebrations associated with it. These spaces
and events become the receptacle of gestures of mutual recognition and respect, of hospitality, neighbourliness,
conviviality, intergenerational transmission and intercultural dialogue. They are opportunities to both share the
present and establish the future. These communities thus rebuild their sense of identity, belonging and continuity,
enabling them to recognise this element as an essential component of their common and shared intangible cultural
heritage»
2
.
1
Nomination file no. 00884 for Inscription in 2013 on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity approved in Baku,
Azerbaijan in December 2013 and Nomination file no. 00394 for Inscription on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of
Humanity approved in Nairobi, Kenya in November 2010 in http://www.unisob.na.it/ateneo/c002_i.htm?vr=1:.
2
www.unesco.org
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Elisabetta Moro / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 223 ( 2016 ) 655 – 661
It is quite significant that the MD received the UNESCO imprimatur the first in the history - together with the
Repas gastronomiques des Français because food was not considered until then a cultural heritage by this
prestigious institution. But in recent years something has changed in public and institutional opinion. The MD is the
litmus test of the birth of a new symbolic common sense that makes food the signal of a planetary transformation of
attitudes, feelings and collective responsibility towards nature and living species. Into this new cultural landscape is
inserted the MD, which is the resultant of different local food cultures and at the same time a global intellectual
product. In fact the UNESCO Mediterranean Diet is not just the result of an acknowledgment of the existence of
something but also the outcome of a crossing of heteroclite glances, that since the fifties, has progressively
identified, created and idealized a real form of life. Diaìta.
Not surprisingly, for the Ancient Greeks the MD meant rule of life, life style, but also home, habitat and research
(Moro, 2014: 16). And the genuine simplicity of olive oil, bread and wine, sacred elements of the Mediterranean
civilization, becomes the symbol of a modern frugal abundance. That is the new recipe theorized by many
intellectuals who looking back to the past may be a return to the future (Latouche, 2000; 2004). And nutrition is one
of the key elements in this new model of society, simply because food has always been the real gasoline of human
history, the material energy of bodies, brains, societies, ideas and emotions. War and peace depend on food more
than on anything else. One common error is the belief that poverty and necessity have mostly determined what
people eat and cook, and also that old traditions were all born by poverty. This is just partially true. All cultures
choose what to eat, why and when, through a collective and quite sophisticated cultural process, in which necessity
is just one possible explanation (Sahlins, 1972; Douglas, 1966).
This general anthropological rule also works for the MD, which today I would define a cultural pattern (Benedict,
1934), to give the sense of a unity of institutions, ideas and traditions that, connected one another, create what we
usually call a culture. The MD in the larger sense of a life style is the effect of the interaction of several institutions,
ideas, and traditions, which co-operated for centuries in a specific geographical area. It is a certain way of farming,
nourishing, feasting, praying: producing goods and worshipping gods.
Professor Jeremiah Stamler, emeritus of the University of the Northwestern University of Chicago, one of the
international stars of cardiology and promoter of the MD as a lifestyle capable to prevent the cardio vascular
diseases, is a special witness and stakeholder of this political, medical, and cultural process. It is relevant to know
also that he has been a colleague of Ancel Keys, the discoverer of the MD and inventor of its name (Moro, 2014: 37-
41). With Keys, Stamler spent part of each year living in the small village of Pioppi/Pollica in Cilento, becoming in
more than 40 years of attending there, a citizen. When Stamler wrote a letter to the UNESCO Commission in favor
of the candidature of the MD he also pointed out the cultural pattern behind it, and he defined it as a social practice
rather than a clinical nutritional system:
«The Mediterranean Diet is for us a shared heritage of value for our well-being, handed down from one
generation to the next, uniting social classes, and bringing families and friends together to share common moments
of delectable and healthful pleasure (…).
I am, for these reasons, convinced that the registration of the Mediterranean Diet in the prestigious UNESCO List
would represent for our community a further guarantee of the safeguard of this tradition and, at the same time, it can
strengthen the UNESCO List that therefore can be perceived by many people as the ideal place acknowledging
traditions that unite and enhance countries, cultures, religions, and community histories that are seemingly different
(Signed: Professor Jeremiah Stamler M.D. President of the Association for the Mediterranean Diet Pioppi/Pollica
Cilento)»
3
.
During my research on the MD spanning one decade, I noticed that the MD is also an invention, in the Latin
sense of the word invenire, which means to discover, to recognize, to find. It is the result of a foreign look that has
recognized a coherent and healthy system of living and feeding, which could not be seen by the natives, who as a
matter of fact, did not have a specific name for it. Again, the name and concept of the MD was invented by
Americans Ancel Keys, a physiologist at the University of Minnesota (and inventor of the United States Army’s K-
Ration) and Margaret Haney, his wife and a biologist of the Mayo Foundation (Moro, 2014; Dixon, 2015).
3
This Letter by Jeremiah Stamler is part of the dossier that the Italian Ministry of Agriculture has attached to the dossier of candidature. Another
interesting case of a process of identification, definition and collective construction of a Cultural Heritage fitting into the UNESCO interpretative
grid is the Val di Noto in Sicily, studied by Berardino Palumbo (Palumbo, 2011).
658 Elisabetta Moro / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 223 ( 2016 ) 655 – 661
In 1951 Ancel Keys was invited to the first FAO Congress after the end of World War II, and during his lecture
he explained that in USA 50% of males from the age of 39 to 59 were condemned to die having a heart attack, and
nobody could explain why. None of his colleagues made a comment, except for a doctor of the University Hospital
of Naples. His name was Gino Bergami. As Ancel Keys writes on his private memories Adventures of a Medical
Scientist, that I analyzed during my research and put in evidence in my book (Moro, 2014) Professor Bergami told
him that the cardiovascular diseases where not present in his hospital. He also did not know why, but maybe it
would have been useful to investigate in that direction. Keys went back to England, where he was spending a
sabbatical year in Oxford University and he kept thinking about what Professor Bergami had told him. He sent a
telegram to Professor Bergami saying that he had been impressed by his observation. Professor Bergami answered
with another telegram saying: “Why don’t you come to Naples and check yourself?”. Keys answered with this
telegraphic sentence: “We are arriving”. The plural is important; his wife was going to join him. He bought a car, a
Hillman Saloon, and in 4 days they reached the city of the Vesuvius. I have interviewed professor Mario Mancini,
an 80 year old professor, who at that time was just 20 and brought the Keys to the hospital and translated for them
all the medical records. It was true. No heart attacks for the people of that region (Keys, 1999: 43-44, 1995: 1322S;
Moro, 2014: 25-26).
In one month Margaret Haney collected many blood samples of the workers of a famous Neapolitan steelworks
factory and she analyzed them. Comparing them with the samples of the men in Minnesota, they noticed that the
cholesterol rates were greatly different. At that point they had a flash of inspiration. Probably cholesterol was the
causation of heart attacks. But that was not all. They started observing what workers ate, and the first evidence was
that they eat meat once a week, on Sunday evening. It was the meat of a traditional sauce for pasta, called ragout,
that was, and still is, mandatory on Sunday lunch when the families gathers around the table (Moro, 2014: 25-26).
The Keys started to take note of what common people ate: lots of vegetables, legumes, broccoli, all kinds of
fruits, unrefined cereals, dairy products, but very little fish and meat. Neapolitans loved soups, minestre and
minestroni, in Italian. Not the same thing as what French people usually call soups, since they were not made with
cream or butter, but with vegetables, olive oil, and a bit of pasta. The Keys found bean soup, pumpkin soup, green
peas soup, zucchini soup. Those who could afford pasta, would add few spoons of the so called short pasta, not long
spaghetti, but small size pasta. If pasta was not available, they used rice, hard bread or the so called biscotto or
fresella a whole meal bread, cooked twice in order to make it very dry, so it may be conserved for long periods.
Ancel and Margret arrived soon at the conclusion that probably food was the key factor. Thus Keys’ intuition gave
the birth to a major international research project called Seven Countries Study (Keys, 1994; Kromouth et al., 1993).
That study began with a pilot study in the small village of Nicotera, in the southern Italian region of Calabria, where
the methodology was first tested on the local male population. The results where consistent with the Neapolitan
ones, and today this experiment is the reason of the local vindication of a primacy in the genealogy of the MD. If the
Calabria’s claim of an exclusive primogeniture from an historical point of view would not be correct, on the other
hand this initial study could be the reason for a legitimate ambition to use the MD UNESCO as an instrument for a
new perspective of development of the territory (Piotrowski, Arezki & Cherif, 2009; Prud’homme, 2013; Mazanec
et al., 2007). In a recent article Jeremiah Stamler suggested that in order to improve the public health the MD, in the
version studied in Nicotera and in other Mediterranean places in the 1950s, indeed in Naples, with few corrections,
should be adopted by everybody (Stamler, 2013). Stamler defined this nutritional pattern the MD for the 21st
century. And during an interview with me on 30th January 2014 in Pioppi, he told me:
«If you look at the papers that described the classical Mediterranean Diet, you will find that it was high in salt,
for many man it was high in wine, it was high in oils - which are very caloric - it was perhaps not as high in protein
as one might like, protein from low fat and fat free dairy products, protein from fish, protein from vegetable
products, fagioli, pasta e fagioli etc. I did not myself do research on the Mediterranean Diet, Keys did a lot of
research and I followed closely what Keys was doing, I kept informed and learned from him. Later, when I
commented, I recommended what I call The Modern Mediterranean Diet. Eating style, modified from the “classical”
diet people followed in places like Nicotera (Calabria), studied forty or fifty years ago. That means: not just low
saturated fat and low cholesterol intakes, to avoid high blood cholesterol, also low salt, not too much alcohol to
avoid high blood pressure, not too much oil, control calories, prevent obesity»
4
.
4
http://www.unisob.na.it/ateneo/galleria.asp?vr=1&idev=44
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Elisabetta Moro / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 223 ( 2016 ) 655 – 661
Many other investigations have been done by the Keys’ research group, and by many other researchers that
brought the OMS to disseminate the Food Guide Pyramid, originally created by the Old Ways Association (Moro,
2014: 28-36; Willett, Sacks, Trichopoulou, Trichopoulos et all., 1995). All those researches, one for all those
conducted in Greece and in Europe by Antonia Trichopoulou (2012, 2009, 2007; Nestle, 1995), have completely
confirmed the initial hypothesis formulated in Naples in 1951 (Mancini & Stamler, 2004). Poor Neapolitan workers
eat healthier than rich American managers, a paradox that few people were ready to accept in a world still very
deeply influenced by the indigence and the malnutrition of World War II.
In 1959 Ancel and Margaret Keys published Eat Well and Stay Well, which immediately became a best seller in
USA. The success of this book was so great that in 1961 Ancel Keys’ gentle and genius face was on the cover of the
Time Magazine (Moro, 2014: 61-65). Few years later the Keys published another book, The Benevolent Bean
(1967), in which this emblematic protein for poor people was presented as a panacea for poor health; a cure for
everything; healthy, light, and nourishing. This diet was also presented as ecologically correct, because it has no bad
impact on the environment (Moro, 2014: 37-38, 48-49). Considering all that, the Keys demonstrated that they had an
extremely advanced position concerning the strict relationship that goes from men to earth, from the health of people
to the healthiness of the globe. And now the FAO
5
tells us that they were absolutely right (Moro, 2014: 17;
Burlingame & Dernini, 2012).
In 1963, when Ancel Keys and Margaret Haney, went into retirement, they decided to move to Italy and
discovered that many things had changed, and not necessarily for the better. The Neapolitans, having become richer,
had changed their habits. Essentially, they had started eating too much. Too many sweets. And in many cases they
had added to the traditional food the industrial packaged foods. These two elements together caused several
alimentary diseases, including diabetes, obesity, and high cholesterol levels in the blood, a phenomenon quite
common also in the rest of the countries in the northern coast of the Mediterranean see (Alexandratos, 2006). But
fortunately, or unfortunately, in Cilento the old alimentary model was still alive, essentially because there had been
no economic growth and the process of industrialization did not arrive over there. The Keys had the sensation that a
paradise was still there and could be discovered. So, first of all, they bought a little hill and they built a house, and
all around them some international scientists did the same, creating a sort of community, a Bloomsbury of Cilento,
that was named Minnelea, from Minneapolis and Elea, a blending of the names of the north American city where
they worked and the ancient city where Parmenides and Zenone gave birth to the western philosophy with the
Eleatic school (Moro, 2014: 44, 118).
Ancel and Margaret lived in Minnelea for 35 years, until 2004, and during all that time they wanted to learn from
common people how to cook in a healthy way. Their very special teacher was Delia, the cook
6
. They made
ethnographic research on food, recording interviews with housewives, fishermen and peasants. And all this
documentation inspired their third book, titled How to Eat Well and Stay Well. The Mediterranean Way, published
in USA in 1975. For the first time the greater public read the expression Mediterranean Diet, invented by them with
the proposal of contrasting the fashion of weight loss diets (Moro, 2014: 44, 118). The scientific Journals had to wait
until 1985 with an article written by Mario Mancini and Anna Ferro Luzzi (Ferro Luzzi & Mancini, 1985).
The manor of the Keys, surrounded by fruit trees, supplied by two organic orchards and one glasshouse, was a
very chic family farm, where the agriculture of proximity, the organic vegetables, food localism, and many other
food mantra were practiced fifty years in advance of the Slow Food movement (Niola, 2015). What the Keys
experienced there was essentially an idea of time, linked to the four seasons, which follow each other, a cycle that
influences also food traditions and gastronomic rites such as Christmas eve supper, Easter lunch, name day feast,
5
F.A.O. has defined the Mediterranean Diet a model of sustainability for the planet. For these reasons:
1. Great diversity that ensures food nutritional quality of diet and biodiversity
2. Variety of food practices and food preparation techniques
3. Main foodstuffs demonstrated as beneficial to health: olive oil, fish, fruits and vegetable, pulses, fermented milk, spices…
4. Strong commitment to culture and traditions
5. Respect for human nature and seasonality
6. diversity of landscapes that contribute to the welfare
7. less demanding food in primary energy and having in priori less environmental impact, due to low consumption of animal
products
6
http://www.unisob.na.it/ateneo/galleria.asp?vr=1&idev=56
660 Elisabetta Moro / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 223 ( 2016 ) 655 – 661
wedding lunch, birthdays, new year's eve dinner, and so on, each time with the same menu, inherited from the
family or from the community.
Southern Italians love to keep up with their traditions, while many other peoples tend to break with traditions
more easily. This happens because most people in the south still cook every day and each Sunday they spend from
three to five hours eating traditional dishes at their parents’ home, even if married. If the Anglo-Saxon and Puritan
cultures do not assign a strong symbolic or social sense to food, in the Catholic and Islamic people living in the
Mediterranean area food has a crucial significance. For them food plays a very important role in their life. That is
also the reason why when Southern Italians talk of the Mediterranean triad (olives, grains, grapes), they go back to
the ancient Greek religion looking for deep and ancestral meanings: Demeter the goddess of agriculture, Athena the
goddess who gave the gift of olive tree, and Dionysus the god of grapes and wine. And even if they are no longer
worshipped these ideal figures still play a central role in the process of identity construction and in the marketing
strategies.
Identity is never a question of truth, but of emotion. We all are persuadable of a past that provokes a certain
emotion in ourselves. That is why people constantly write their history. And even when they are sincerely convinced
that they are simply recording what really happens, they are any ways observing reality from one particular point of
view, even more so when there is a distance of centuries which makes historical reconstructions extremely difficult,
and in any case influenced by present questions. As shown by many anthropologists in the past history people
always look for something that might be significant for the present.
So why do Italian people love to imagine and tell that the Mediterranean Diet is a gift of Greek gods and not for
example something that has to do with a geographical habitat? Even if they know that nature is a part of the
question, they look for a poetic and mythic explanation of their traditions (Moro, 2014: 98-106). So all though today
many of them no longer follow the traditional MD and they have experienced a complete food transition toward the
Western Diet, they still produce a symbolic value around it, sometimes just to fascinate tourists or to sell food
products. We may say that in any southern Italian there is a potential storyteller of the MD. And this is a great
advantage for a new project of development based on it.
Claude Lévi-Strauss (1962) used to say that mythology plays a great role in all cultures, because it is like a bridge
that men construct to reach a sense, a meaning that stays on the other side of the river. Somehow, Ancel and
Margaret Keys tried to build a bridge. Between the advanced medical investigation and the philosophy of life of a
population. They appreciated the poetic character of the people they met in Cilento, and they spent hours listening to
them because they wanted to learn, from those “primitive” farmers, how to cook and behave in order to reach the
promised Land of Longevity, a very modern myth (Moro, 2014: 159-162) that fascinates an increasing number of
people. In this sense the MD is a model of lifestyle, an educational pattern, a unique heritage that many people will
probably want to learn in the next years. And a very farsighted economic development could profit of this both
immaterial and material demand, making the most out of the common capability to create narrations out of food and
culinary traditions relying on the fact that there is a very high longevity rate in Italian regions such as Cilento,
Calabria, and Sardinia, much higher than in the rest of the World, comparable only with some areas in Japan, and 4
years longer than in the USA. Besides it is higher than in other parts of Italy. As a matter of fact in Cilento presently
women tend to reach the age of 88, while the average in Italy is 84, and men the age of 83 despite the Italian average
of 79. And this is a record better than any advertisement if correctly used in a cultural marketing plan.
The Keys experienced the positive effect of the local lifestyle themselves. In fact they reached a considerable age.
Margaret died when she was 97 years old, and Ancel when he was over a hundred years old. This result is not
attributable to genetic factors, since they were not blood relatives, but most probably to the role played by their
lifestyle (Moro, 2014: 149-150). A Mediterranean Way.
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... In 2012, the Food and Agriculture Organization ranked the MedDiet as one of the most sustainable diets worldwide (Burlingame & Dernini, 2012;Dernini & Berry, 2015). This dual recognition has brought a new perspective, gaining significance for green economies and development regions distant from mass tourism or industrialized agriculture (Moro, 2016). ...
... Particularly significant is the emphasis on sharing and consuming food together, serving as the cornerstone for the cultural identity and continuity of communities across the Mediterranean basin (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization [UNESCO] -Mediterranean diet, 2013). Essentially, UNESCO acknowledged the anthropological pattern related to the food culture that the communities in the Mediterranean basin have created, developed, and transmitted for centuries (Moro, 2016). Pairing this intangible cultural heritage with tourism activities can serve as a motivating factor to attract more visitors and encourage them to experience it (Sotiriadis, 2017). ...
... Furthermore, Southern Italian people love to keep up with their traditions. This happens because most people in the south still cook every day and each Sunday, they spend from three to five hours eating traditional dishes at their parents' home even with their own families [21]. While there are numerous scientific studies exploring the health effects of the Cilento diet, particularly its impact on longevity (e.g. ...
... [18,22]), alongside anthropological studies on the Mediterranean diet in Cilento (e.g. [21]), there is a noticeable absence in scientific literature regarding a systematic study on traditional dishes in Cilento cuisine and the continuity of their knowledge across multiple generations. Additionally, available books often list recipes without any analysis of the consumption of these dishes within the local population. ...
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Local gastronomy could be considered a relevant part of the more general concept of Traditional Knowledge, that recently has attracted increasing attention by researchers, especially if associated with conservation and sustainable use of biological resources. The present research was conducted using a semi-structured interview, 62 informants (39 women, 23 men) whose average age was 55 years (range 27–86 years) were interviewed. 109 traditional dishes are documented as still being prepared by people living along the Cilento coastal areas, 57 of which were reported by at least 5 people interviewed. The study reveals that despite the influence of globalization and modernization, traditional foodways and culinary practices continue to play an important role in the daily lives of the people in this region. Specifically, the study highlights the persistence of certain dishes, which are deeply rooted in the local culinary traditions and are still prepared and consumed by the people in this region.
... Koncept mediteranske prehrane, kakav nam je danas poznat, dugujemo istraživanjima dr. Ancela Keysa (Matalas 2006;Dernini et al. 2012;Petrillo 2012, Dhami i Vaidya 2015Moro 2016) koji ga prvi put koristi označavajući njime prehranu juga Italije 50-ih i 60-ih godina prošlog stoljeća, odnosno onakvu kakva je bila "prije nego je sve krenulo krivo" (Ivanišević et al 2023: 19 koje predstavlja osnovni globalni akcijski plan FAO-a, te u skladu s lokalnim inicijativama i politikama proizašlima iz ovih globalnih ciljeva (poput već spomenutog Akcijskog plana), moguće je zamisliti da bi vrtići svojom prehrambenom politikom, usmjerenom prema lokalno proizvedenim, svježim i sezonskim namirnicama, mogli dati malen, ali dugoročan doprinos postizanju globalnih prehrambenih ciljeva. Tako bi lokalizacija mediteranske prehrane u okvirima institucija predškolskog odgoja predstavljala podršku konceptima razvoja temeljenima na simboličkom i identitetskom značenju tradicijske prehrane. ...
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Pjat za polizat’ predstavlja rezultate istraživanja prehrane u dječjim vrtićima na otoku Hvaru u proljeće 2019. godine. Ovim su se istraživanjem prvenstveno željele propitati logika i logistika organizirane dječje prehrane, ali i razina dječje prehrambene pismenosti. U pomanjkanju obrazovnih ili sličnih dugoročnih programa usmjerenih prema lokalnoj zajednici, taj je projekt zamišljen (dijelom) kao akcijsko istraživanje, svojevrstan pilot-projekt usmjeren podizanju svijesti o temeljnim vrijednostima mediteranske prehrane u okviru predškolskog odgoja i obrazovanja, a posljedično i u lokalnoj zajednici.
... We owe the concept of the Mediterranean diet, as we know it today, to the research of Dr. Ancel Keys (Matalas 2006;Dernini et al. 2012;Petrillo 2012, Dhami andVaidya 2015;Moro 2016), who used it for the first time to denote the diet of southern Italy in the 1950s and 1960s, that is, as it was "before everything went wrong" (Ivanišević et al 2023: 19). In the United States, where Keys came from, there was an epidemic of cardiovascular problems, while the population of southern Italy in those years showed extremely good cardiovascular health, despite a lower standard of living and relatively poor access to medical care. ...
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A Finger-Licking Dish (locally referred to as Pjat za polizat’) presents the results of a survey of nutrition in kindergartens on the island of Hvar in the spring of 2019. This research primarily strived to question the logic and logistics of organised children’s nutrition, but also the level of children’s nutrition literacy. Against the backdrop of a lack of educational or similar long-term programmes aimed at the local community, the project was intended (in part) as action research, a kind of pilot project aimed at raising awareness of the basic values of the Mediterranean diet within preschool education, and consequently in the local community.
... The very famous and critically discussed work by the American doctor Ancel Keys (and his wife Elizabeth Keys) during the 1950s (see, e.g., [14]) laid the ground for naming and categorising the Mediterranean cuisine as something special-especially Italian-although, this categorisation has been criticised for being too 'white' and lacking both evidence and scientific precision [15]. Later (in 2010), the Mediterranean Diet was acknowledged by UNESCO as an intangible and unique cultural heritage, pointing to its connection to a broader concept of lifestyle related to the Mediterranean region's ways of living, eating, and producing food, caring for the environment, prioritising sociality around meals, and acknowledging history and tradition, rather than a narrow focus on human health and specific food crops [16]. A few years later, the MD was redefined again as a sustainable cuisine-this time guided by the above-mentioned definition by FAO. ...
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A certain level of culinary sustainability was automatically built into many ancient cuisines due to scarcity in food supplies and, hence, optimal use of the available resources with minimal waste. The concept of sustainability in the global food systems today is much more complex, where the planetary limits to population growth and availability of food resources are leading to tremendous stresses on the overall conditions of the planet including the climate. Still, lessons from world cuisines across space and time may serve as a guide towards a more sustainable plant-forward cuisine in the future. In this essay, we highlight how a focus on gastronomy, especially gastronomic heritage, can provide a framework for a more sustainable cuisine. We see gastronomy as much more than related to cooking and fine dining but also referring to a complex understanding of the word, involving taste, lifestyle, meal culture, commensality, traditional knowledge, craftmanship, and food making. The Mediterranean Diet, traditional Japanese cuisine, and ancient Roman practices are discussed as examples.
... Enfocándonos en el turismo gastronómico dentro de la ruralidad, el desarrollo sostenible recoge principalmente la participación de los turistas y los agentes locales (empresas, instituciones y población) y afecta a los ámbitos económico, sociocultural y medioambiental (Angelakis et al., 2023). En el caso de la dieta mediterránea, por ejemplo, todos los elementos que la conforman (culturales, económicos y sociales) podrían emplearse como herramientas para fomentar un desarrollo más sostenible (Moro, 2016). De este modo, con la adopción de productos locales para elaborar las recetas tradicionales, no sólo se beneficia a la población (mayor empleo, aumento de renta) y al sector agrario local (productores, establecimientos minoristas), sino también a las actividades turísticas: ...
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El turismo gastronómico se ha visto estrechamente ligado a la sostenibilidad, sobre todo en zonas rurales, como respuesta a las preocupaciones ambientales en la actualidad. La literatura científica se ha centrado en los cambios generados por el turismo y las actuaciones necesarias en la cadena de valor alimentaria para minimizar los impactos negativos generados. Esta modalidad de turismo desempeña un papel dinamizador de territorios dado que consigue vincular un lugar con su identidad, mediante la revalorización del producto local y las tradiciones gastronómicas. Es por todo ello que en la ruralidad se aúnan cada vez con mayor eficacia los esfuerzos de todos los agentes intervinientes (empresarios, productores, instituciones, empresas agroalimentarias, turísticas y otras iniciativas sociales y culturales) a fin de crear sinergias que faciliten el desarrollo de todos los sectores afectados desde la multifuncionalidad de las actividades. El objetivo de este estudio es analizar la actitud de los empresarios rurales en relación con el desarrollo rural, la sostenibilidad y el turismo. Se ha elegido el caso concreto del restaurante Arrieros, situado Linares de la Sierra (Parque Natural Sierra de Aracena y Picos de Aroche), al ser un reflejo de la resiliencia y la capacidad de sinergia empresarial en un pequeño municipio con problemas demográficos. La metodología utilizada es mixta, basada en entrevistas al restaurante y a otros empresarios locales y análisis de fuentes secundarias (web del establecimiento, estadísticas oficiales). Los resultados obtenidos son: (a) la oferta gastronómica produce modificaciones en la demanda turística y favorece cambios de dinámica empresarial; (b) las relaciones de cooperación/colaboración entre productores, restaurantes y empresas turísticas son cruciales para una la actividad turística más sostenible y conseguir el desarrollo local.
... The Mediterranean countries are traditionally linked by the so-called "Mediterranean diet," and several research studies have delved into various aspects of this shared culinary tradition, ranging from health-related aspects to more cultural ones [42][43][44]. A recent work [45] highlights issues of malnutrition and the environmental impact of the food system in all Mediterranean countries that would benefit from a wider spread of the Mediterranean diet. ...
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In recent years, the growing interest in food as a central component of heritage preservation has been paired with a reflection on the sustainability of food systems. At the same time, place-based food governance has undergone processes of hybridization, opening up to a wider range of stakeholders. We argue that ecomuseums can positively contribute to the promotion of sustainable food systems that can preserve cultural heritage without undermining the development of healthy food systems. To discuss this hypothesis, we conducted an exploratory study to assess the current diffusion and food-related practices of ecomuseums in the Mediterranean area. Integrating the information of existing databases with online research of new institutions, we mapped a large sample of ecomuseums and carried out a Web Content Analysis. The main results of the research are a geolocalized map of Mediterranean ecomuseums and their activities and an index assessing their capacity to engage users on relevant topics through their webpages. The results highlight the existence of an unbalanced distribution of experiences, and the potential for growth, especially in the east and south of the Mediterranean countries.
... Additionally, those factors are characterized by highly complex interactions that in each person produce specific eating habits (WHO, 2018). Nevertheless, there are some groups of individuals that share common eating habits thus giving place to some recognized dietary patterns, such as for example specific diets aimed at certain health benefits or sustainable diets aimed at preserving the environmental balance (Krause et al., 2015;Moro, 2016;van Bussel et al., 2019) Healthy diets are aimed at providing the body with the necessary macro and micro nutrients for body functioning, as well as some bioactive compounds that bear additional benefits for those who consume them. They are called healthy because they protect against many of the non-communicable diseases like diabetes, obesity, heart and cardiovascular diseases or cancer (WHO, 2018). ...
... The traditional Mediterranean Diet (MD), recognized by UNESCO as an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity [1][2][3], emphasizes plant-based foods and is characterized by high consumption of minimally processed food such as unrefined cereals, fruit, vegetables, legumes, potatoes, nuts, and seeds; moderate consumption of dairy products, eggs, poultry, and fish; and low consumption of red meat. Extra virgin olive oil is the principal source of fat in the MD pattern, while wine may be consumed in moderation with meals [4]. ...
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Associations between subjective well-being (SWB) and dietary habits, employment status, and habitual activities are increasingly capturing the focus of researchers as well as policymakers worldwide. This study aimed to explore these associations in a sample of the population in Greece and Cyprus via an online survey. In total, 936 questionnaires (470: Cyprus, 466: Greece) were analyzed to study the associations between the Mediterranean Diet (MD) (using the 14-item MEDAS score, (14-MEDAS)), subjective well-being (SWB), and several socioeconomic factors. Key remarks of this survey highlight the positive impact of MD adherence on some well-being items. Namely, statistically significant differences were found on the following items: Satisfied with life (p < 0.001), Life worthwhile (p < 0.001), Feeling happy (p < 0.001), worried (p = 0.005), and depressed (p = 0.001), when comparing Low MD adherence (14-MEDAS < 5) to High MD adherence (14-MEDAS > 10). Other lifestyle habits such as spending time with friends and family, spending time in nature, and habitual physical activity were associated with aspects of SWB such as Life satisfaction, Life worthwhile, Feeling happy, and energetic. The findings support adherence to the MD, since it is associated with higher life satisfaction and self-reported happiness in this sample and should be considered when developing health policies on well-being.
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Over the last decades, the Mediterranean diet gained enormous scientific, social, and commercial attention due to proven positive effects on health and undeniable taste that facilitated a widespread popularity. Researchers have investigated the role of Mediterranean-type dietary patterns on human health all around the world, reporting consistent findings concerning its benefits. However, what does truly define the Mediterranean diet? The myriad of dietary scores synthesizes the nutritional content of a Mediterranean-type diet, but a variety of aspects are generally unexplored when studying the adherence to this dietary pattern. Among dietary factors, the main characteristics of the Mediterranean diet, such as consumption of fruit and vegetables, olive oil, and cereals should be accompanied by other underrated features, such as the following: (i) specific reference to whole-grain consumption; (ii) considering the consumption of legumes, nuts, seeds, herbs and spices often untested when exploring the adherence to the Mediterranean diet; (iii) consumption of eggs and dairy products as common foods consumed in the Mediterranean region (irrespectively of the modern demonization of dietary fat intake). Another main feature of the Mediterranean diet includes (red) wine consumption, but more general patterns of alcohol intake are generally unmeasured, lacking specificity concerning the drinking occasion and intensity (i.e., alcohol drinking during meals). Among other underrated aspects, cooking methods are rather simple and yet extremely varied. Several underrated aspects are related to the quality of food consumed when the Mediterranean diet was first investigated: foods are locally produced, minimally processed, and preserved with more natural methods (i.e., fermentation), strongly connected with the territory with limited and controlled impact on the environment. Dietary habits are also associated with lifestyle behaviors, such as sleeping patterns, and social and cultural values, favoring commensality and frugality. In conclusion, it is rather reductive to consider the Mediterranean diet as just a pattern of food groups to be consumed decontextualized from the social and geographical background of Mediterranean culture. While the methodologies to study the Mediterranean diet have demonstrated to be useful up to date, a more holistic approach should be considered in future studies by considering the aforementioned underrated features and values to be potentially applied globally through the concept of a “Planeterranean” diet.
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The notion of the Mediterranean diet has undergone a progressive evolution over the past 60 years, from a healthy dietary pattern to a sustainable dietary pattern, in which nutrition, food, cultures, people, environment, and sustainability all interact into a new model of a sustainable diet. An overview of the historical antecedents and recent increased interest in the Mediterranean diet is presented and challenges related to how to improve the sustainability of the Mediterranean diet are identified. Despite its increasing popularity worldwide, adherence to the Mediterranean diet model is decreasing for multifactorial influences – life styles changes, food globalization, economic, and socio-cultural factors. These changes pose serious threats to the preservation and transmission of the Mediterranean diet heritage to present and future generations. Today’s challenge is to reverse such trends. A greater focus on the Mediterranean diet’s potential as a sustainable dietary pattern, instead than just on its well-documented healthy benefits, can contribute to its enhancement. More cross-disciplinary studies on environmental, economic and socio-cultural, and sustainability dimensions of the Mediterranean diet are foreseen as a critical need.
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This article contributes to the recent literature on tourism destination competitiveness including the gargantuan compilations of competitiveness factors by Ritchie and Crouch (2003), or Dwyer and Kim (2003), and, particularly, the widely known prototype of a Competitiveness Monitor (CM) initiated by the World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC). The central question underlying this article is whether an arrangement of data such as the CM can be transformed from a purely definitional system into an explanatory model. A number of criticisms regarding the way of constructing the CM, its epistemological nature, and the absence of any accessibility factors lead to a moderately revised system that is explored by latent variable modeling. The empirical findings support this type of model, which tends to better explain the levels of tourism activity already achieved than sustained tourism growth. A discussion of the detailed results produces several recommendations on how to adjust the future strategy of research on destination competitiveness.